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So what’s next for 2017?

So as the year wraps up, I find myself pondering the long list of mistakes I made this year and planning how to do better next year.

First of all, Dark Bargains has been kind of a disaster. I deviated from my original outline and lost all of my momentum. The story is still there, but it has changed so much that it’s just not coming together. I’m still slogging away at it, but it’s really not working well in the serial format with the changes and I’m strongly considering scrapping that and just releasing it as a novel. Either way, it *will* be finished in 2017. I apologize for the delay, but sometimes this just doesn’t work like paint-by-numbers the way I’d like it to.

I really should have started on the Andrew story from The Winter Billionaires series already. Honestly, I never expected the Winter’s Heat story to take off the way it did, so you guys caught me off guard without a follow-up ready. Billionaires haven’t really been my thing as a reader or a writer, so I’m still figuring that out as I go. It’s taken six months, but I’ve finally got some good ideas coming together and you can look forward to that in 2017. I’m thinking it’s probably going to be a bit shorter (Winter’s Heat was 120,000 words, about 500 pages in print which is *long*), and I’m still on the fence about whether I want to write and release it in the same serial format or whether to just publish it as a novel when the story is done. Given the number of one-star reviews I’ve gotten on Winter’s Heat for being a serial with cliffhangers, I’m strongly leaning towards doing the novel, though.

With One Word has been a quiet success. It’s not a huge seller, but the people who do read it seem to like it. That makes me happy, because it’s the kind of story that I really wanted to tell and why I started this pen name in the first place. I want to do more books like that. Innocence Whispers, Willow’s story, is 1/3 of the way done and as my Christmas present to me I’m dropping everything else for the rest of the year in a push to get it finished and published in January. The cover is ready, so I just need to finish the book. If I’m happy with it (and if my readers like it) I’ve got stories lined up for Willow’s friends Tegan and Lauren as well.

I’ve also got ideas for a couple of other series (novel-length series, not serial installments) sitting on the back burner. One is a set of military romances based around a team of former special forces hotties who provide international security in the nastier parts of the world as well as doing hostage rescues and anti-terrorism ops. Another is a set of contemporaries about three brothers living in a small town in Texas who each desperately needs the right woman to come along and heal his mangled heart. I’d like to get to those sooner rather than later, but we’ll see how things turn out.

So while 2016 was kind of a mess, overall it was positive. In 2017 I’ll work to stay on point instead of being scattershot about publishing in different genres, and I’ll be publishing more. I published over 300,000 words in 2016, and I fully expect to publish twice that much in 2017 as I’ve got close to 100k words of it already written. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for it, anyway.

10 thoughts on “So what’s next for 2017?”

I just read With One Word today & immediately looked for Willow’s story on Amazon. I will order it as soon as you release it. Loved the fight with Grant & Ray btw. Loved Holly & Trish & Willow each strong in their own way. I enjoyed Aiden’s bit of remorse too. All gratifying. Good read! Would love to see Grant & Holly appear even briefly in future books, maybe celebrating life events like college graduation or pregnancy/birth. Thanks!

I spent the morning trying to figure out a publishing schedule for the year. Innocence Whispers, Dark Bargains, and Andrew’s sequel to Winter’s Heat are currently in progress to one degree or another and I’ve been juggling them around to decide which projects need to be prioritized.

I have tentatively put Innocence Whispers into the schedule as the main project for February to be completed in March. It’s currently sitting at about 30,000 out of 75,000 words completed. I really need to bump up the next couple of installments of Dark Bargains, though, because I’ve left my readers hanging on those way too long. I think if I push I can get two Dark Bargains installments and Innocence Whispers out the door by the end of March. That’s the plan, anyway. I’d like to get the Dark Bargains series wrapped up for my poor, neglected readers before summer (I really am sorry, guys!!!). Then if things go the way they’re supposed to, I should have my plate cleared off to start the Winter’s Heat sequel in May or June and have it complete by the end of the year.

Whenever I write something as a serial, I will always release it in a novelized format when it’s completed. Different people consume their reading material in different ways, though.

I know some writers who put up a chapter at a time on their blog and their readers follow along that way until it’s finished and published. Personally that would drive me crazy because of the way that I write, but it works for them.

I’ve had a number of people email me and tell me that they enjoy getting stories in this format because they can read an installment on the way to work and the cliffhanger keeps them interested until the next part becomes available. And despite the novelized versions of my serials being available (and prominently advertised at the end of the freebie first serial installment as a cheaper way to get the whole thing at once) I still sell as many or more copies of the serialized versions every month as I do of the novelized versions.

I’m kind of reluctant to argue with them when they’re paying me. 🙂

I doubt I’m going much further with the serial thing, though. It was a mistake with Dark Bargains. I’m going to do the next Winter Billionaires run (Andrew’s Story) as a serial, but I think that after that I’m going to stick to novels.

I love your books!!! I love full length novels, but serials keep me engaged and dying to know what happens. I read With One Word and fell in love with it!! Now I can’t wait for Willows story!!! Any word on its release date?

Most likely when I get back to writing again I’ll be completing Dark Bargains, since I’ve kept those poor readers at a standstill for so long. But I really do want to finish Willow’s story. With One Word is still one of the books I’m the most proud of writing, even though a lot of people didn’t care for it much. I’m hoping that I’ll be as happy with Innocence Whispers when it’s finished.